JOSE DE LA ISLA: Immigration reform puts heat on Congress

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Immigration-reform activists gave members of Congress a workout during lawmakers’ August recess.

The Alliance for Citizenship, a broad cross-section of labor and business groups, religious denominations and immigrant and civil-rights organizations, mobilized tens of thousands of their cohorts at 1,200 “Immigration-Reform Summer” events, spokesman Shannon Maurer said.

Alliance representatives made 350 congressional visits, focusing on 62 lawmakers. Some activists gathered 600,000 signatures on petitions urging that a path to citizenship be built into the legislation they hope will come from the House as a companion to Senate Bill S. 744. Member groups and individuals participated in 132 town hall meetings in 41 states.

The coalition even claims to have turned around 25 Republicans, saying the legislators have come out in favor of a pathway to citizenship.

That turnaround may be partly the effect of 81,500 emails, faxes and phone calls to Congress; the communications aimed to counteract ardent opposition in the House of Representatives to making citizenship part of any legislation. Citizenship has become the Achilles’ heel of immigration reform.

“Those who’ve counted us out before have been consistently proven wrong,” said María Rodríguez, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition. “It’s not a policy issue or even a political one. It’s about our moms and dads, sisters and brothers.”

Personal interest, policy and politics make people intensely passionate about this matter. But it now has a new enemy: delay.

The Syrian conflict and debt-limit debate may displace immigration reform as front-burner concerns. Reform could be put off until 2014, if then. House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told The Wall Street Journal that, as far as he’s concerned, it’s all right to debate immigration and do nothing about it.

Since January, a sizable majority of voters has favored improving the immigration system. A Gallup poll found 72 percent support allowing undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship.

Acting on principle can be a risky proposition; some congressional representatives get nervous when they have to take a position. Of 233 Republicans, only 24 represent districts where more than a fourth of the constituents are Hispanic, according to Fox News Latino. There’s apparently little motivation to hurry up and act on principle or to broaden the party’s political base.

Meanwhile, only about half of the nation’s 11 million undocumented residents will ever reach the finish line to citizenship, according to experts, who predict disqualifications, fees, penalties and long waiting periods for applicants. Even those who persevere won’t be eligible for citizenship for 13 years under the current Senate proposal, with a few exceptions. That’s 2026, seven congressional elections from now.

Other approaches are worth considering, such as the one made by immigration analyst Arnold Torres and by Peter Schey of the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law: California could ask President Barack Obama for an executive order providing temporary protection status to that state’s undocumented immigrants.

This would fast-track their settlement and minimize further family instability. California has a lot of skin in the game, with a quarter of the country’s undocumented residents living there.

The Alliance for Citizenship should be congratulated for its summer efforts, but it should not settle for half a loaf of unequal and delayed citizenship.